I agree but there is a percentage of people who will vote for somebody based purely on the fact that they know the person. So being visible in the community gathers so a fair few votes.
If it was down to me one of the things I would change would be to remove religion completely out of politics. Why should Tynwald have prayers etc before each sitting? Why as part of the Tynwald Ceremony should they all have to troop off for a church service? When those requirements where introduced the vast majority were Christian and went to church. That has long ceased to be the case

I had Craine as favourite to be elected as he had stood before, is an ex local commissioner, a Methodist preacher and had been involved in education for a long time so he was a known "local" face and that tends to appeal a certain section of the local community. Also Quayle had been health minister for several years which recently has been a position that is a poisoned chalice. I had him being re-elected but running second to Craine. Shimmins topping the poll was a complete surprise to me.

If the question was whether the expense of running the aircraft could be treated as a deduction from income when calculating tax due then potentially you might be correct however that is not the point. We are not talking about income or corporation tax but VAT.
Generally you can reclaim VAT on goods and services purchased for use in your business. That business can be you as a sole trader, partnership, company etc. If there is an element of private use you can only reclaim the business use proportion.
But to reclaim VAT you must first be a VAT registered business. Again a sole trader, partnership, company etc. To be a VAT registered business you must be making VATable supplies. In effect you are charging VAT on your sales either at the zero rate or standard rate. Using Hamilton as an example that could be Hamilton himself but he would have to be invoicing for his services as an F1 driver and then charging VAT on the amounts charged.
More likely though is the aircraft will be owned by a company and the business of that company will the leasing/hiring out of the aircraft. Depending on various factors that may be a Vatable business and the company would charge VAT on the chartering out of the aircraft. If that is the case the company could reclaim the VAT on the aircraft purchase. The question is whether the structures that have been established so that VAT can be reclaimed are really proper businesses or little more than shams. If you look at the practice note I linked earlier in respect of yachts you will see that it sets out structures that are unacceptable and in essence they are structures that are really just there to lease to parties connected to the party who funded/owner the yacht. In essence that is the accusation in respect of what many of these aircraft structures will be doing.
Looking at yachts, now to have a company owning a yacht registered for VAT so you can reclaim the VAT on the purchase in essence you have to have the yacht registered for charter with one of the main yacht charters and if you the "owner" want to use then you have to charter off the charterer at the published rate. When you are not chartering the yacht it will be available for anybody else to charter on the same basis. In essence that really should be what should happen in respect of aircraft although there various technicalities.
The matter that will be being reviewed with regard to the aircraft is whether the aircraft are really available for charter etc on the same basis that the "owner" charters it so potentially the company is an aircraft charter business or is it really only available to the "owner" or those they are connected to in which case it probably is a sham.
Note in the above there is no question of whether the IoM and the UK have different VAT rules etc. They don't. Both should operate the same rules. The question is whether the structures which on the surface met the required criteria where really what they made out to be or whether they were really structures to make private use of aircraft look like something else. I believe it was the latter.
Who will be blamed? It will be the advisors who set up the structures as IoM Govt will say that on the surface the structures were valid and therefore the VAT treatment was correct based on the information the advisors etc gave them. If that turns out to be the case you might be right to wonder though how much did IoM Govt know or suspect and whether they turned a blind eye or were less than thorough in reviewing and just accepted what was presented to them.
I am very doubtful about the structures as a good few years ago I had a client who was considering acquiring an aircraft with a friend. His professional advisor was against the idea and so was year. They never proceeded but got a fairway down the road and were using one of the larger firms on the Island. A conference call was arranged to go through the structuring and possibly a little unfairly I was given the conference dial in details and requested by the advisor to dial in but be totally silent. Unless you announce yourself with several people joining the call at roughly the same time then nobody really has an idea if you have joined the call. The larger IoM firm had no idea I was listening in whilst they discussed the structuring, VAT, etc. I have to say it was enlightening and it was shortly after that my client pulled the plug. It is also why I believe that many of the aircraft structures are little more than structures established to make like private use of an aircraft look like something else so the VAT can be reclaimed.

I admire your optimism. In simple terms you cannot reclaim VAT on aircraft acquired for private use. In the correct circumstances you potentially can reclaim VAT on aircraft acquired for business use. If you purchased an aircraft you would prefer that the aircraft met the business criteria so the VAT could be reclaimed. The issue with regard to aircraft is that people like Hamilton and others have essentially acquired aircraft for their own private use so they should not be able to reclaim the VAT but they would prefer that not to be the case. The "clever bods" have therefore looked to structure the transaction so that it can be claimed it met the business criteria and the VAT be reclaimed. IoM Govt etc can therefore claim that the IoM and the UK operate the same rules.
IoM will have probably not looked at the structuring too carefully and accepted assertions that the purchase etc met the business criteria. However in reality if the aircraft has basically been acquired for private use then that is the fact of the matter. Trying to put together a clever structure so it looks like something different does not alter the fact that the aircraft has been acquired for private use. Basically it is an argument of substance over form and we have been down this route before with yachts and the IoM were told to stop. This resulted in several firms shrinking very quickly or going to the wall and a fair number of people were laid off but no "old" structures were reviewed so nobody had to repay the VAT reclaimed. That I believe is the best scenario we can hope for with regard to aircraft.
The practice note relating to yachts issued at the time makes interesting reading especially part 5 "unacceptable yacht chartering structures" if you read between the lines you can guess what the IoM has been up to with aircraft. https://www.gov.im/media/338149/customs_practice_note_yachts.pdf

Yes, whether or not you think Karran was effective at least you could say about him is that he appeared to be trying to continually raise issues and worked his butt off. Since the election now many times has Robertshaw raised this issue, pressed the Govt on this, kept the matter in the public eye? I don't get the impression he has at all and so I see him as complicit as the rest.
Robertshaw seems to treat being a back bencher as a retirement role only popping up every now and again to bash the Govt to prove he is not dead.

But he does very little. Every now and then when he sees the opportunity to get a bit of publicity he raises his head but most time he just sits schtum and collects his salary. If he was really so passionate and driven by this he would be weekly or monthly highlighting examples of waste, inefficiency, proposing improvements but there is deathly silence until he picks up something somebody else has done and says "Ooh look what XYZ has done, isn't it terrible the IoM is not doing the same"
Either piss or get off the pot as I get much more annoyed about somebody taking a position and doing F All once they have got a position than in respect of somebody who maybe is doing a poor job but they are trying their but off and it is the best that they can do. I view Robertshaw as basically the equivalent of Geoff Corkish when he was an MLC. They are both in it for there ego whilst doing as little as possible.

I would agree to an extent but there are some who appear to treat being an MHK or an MLC as a nice retirement position where they have to do little but see out there time.
If we want to follow Guernsey's lead on certain matters to try and balance the IoM budget then I would suggest that we look to follow some of there tax policies. Their corporate 10% tax bracket is much wider than the IoM's e.g. it includes fiduciary, insurance etc businesses.

I find it hard to listen to Robertshaw as he is so oily, but I heard him on the radio this morning and all I was left thinking is it was the same old storey from him. Great at criticising from the side lines and saying the obvious, we all know we need cuts and to reorganise, but effing useless at actually doing the job or coming up with workable ideas. FFS he was on to complain about an increase in the costs of numbers and when asked did not know what they were. He only had one thing to research and he could not even do that.
What did Robertshaw come up with when he was Minister for Policy and Reform? A road show where the questions were loaded and directed to where he wanted the audience to go and he got narked when audience members challenged him. His idea to cut the Treasury's pension deficit in terms of public servants salaries was to increase employers contributions which he heralded as a big saving for the Treasury. Possibly but it was zero saving for Govt as all he was doing was transferring responsibility from Treasury to Departments as the employers. He produced possibly the single worst bit of legislation that has been drafted in the IoM in 30 years, and rather than listen to advise he totally ignored it with the result that legislation might have had broad support got rejected.
I forced myself to watch the MTV clip and in summary it appears to be that he likes what Guernsey are intending to do, it is terrible the IoM Govt have not done similar and he is tearing his hair out about it. I might accept that from somebody who had been campaigning loud on the matter, was bringing ideas forward, had little influence but not from somebody who is one of only 24MHKs who you barely anything from most of the time. I presume he is now interested in savings as he can then argue that Govt spends them on a cruise terminal or his farming subsidies.
OK he is right that Govt should be doing more but to me Robertshaw is just as much part of the problem as he seems happy most of the time to do F All to pick up his monthly pay and farming subsidies. When he does say anything it is only really for self promotion just as in this case where he goes running to the press rather than trying to get the matter into Tynwald etc Even Moorehouse had the gumption to try and raise the matter by asking a question the other week about increase in costs and numbers all be it he would have done better to have the figures broken down between front line services such as doctors, teachers etc and those we might call pen pushers

I know the rules for learning to drive in the IoM but what I am having trouble finding though is whether if you have an IoM provisional license and are over 17 you can have driving lessons in the UK etc subject to the normal UK rules re L plates, being accompanied by a qualified driver. I know you can not take your test there but cannot see whether you can have lessons, practice etc
Reason for asking is that we have a daughter in university in UK and she is now thinking about learning to drive so is about to apply for a an IoM provisional license. The intention is she would take her test in the IoM but have lessons over here when back for the holidays etc and in the UK when at university.

Not if it was a 2006 company as there is no requirement to file registers of members or if the shares were registered in the name of a nominee
Banks's interest in Rock Holdings is not exactly a secret as it is set out in many public documents going back many years e.g. https://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com/?ACT=18&ID=6387&LANG or note 23 on page 25 of the following accounts.
I agree about the BO register being a red herring. Rock Holdings Limited has services provided to it by an Isle of Man Trust Company. They are required to know who the BO is and have due diligence on file etc and there are heavy penalties for non compliance. The UK has a public BO register and it is pants. There is no control and you can put whoever you like down as nobody seems to check. In the last couple of weeks I have done UK company searches and seen statements along the lines of "the company has not yet identified who is the person of significant control". Others have listed offshore companies as the relevant party which is not accordance with the Act but nobody seems that bothered about.
I admire the balls of the IoM Fiduciary who looks after Rock Holdings unless he is a part owner, he has a finger in several businesses IoM Businesses, including Manx Financial which owns Conister Bank https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-4915530/Brexit-bad-boy-Arron-Banks-widens-net.html & https://www.mfg.im/sites/default/files/2018-03/annual-report-2017.pdf as I expect acting for Banks probably makes you a target for greater scrutiny etc and I would prefer a quite life unless there was a very large fee involved to make up for all the hassle.

Probably not and I doubt you or virtually anybody has. You might get held up behind for a small part of the prom, but generally once past you catch up with the vehicle that was in front of you before you got held up. It is like seeing people trying to overtake if you are coming in from the airport to Douglas and there is a long queue doing about 50mph. By the time you get to Fort North they are probably only a couple of cars and 10 seconds ahead of where they would have been if they had just chilled traveling in the queue

Nice of you to forward my post to Platini so that he could comment on it.
I think we use the phrase World Class too readily and whilst I agree he was a very good player for me he does not quite get in that World Class bracket. He was never the player England managers built their team around, at think at the time that was Bryan Robson and his place in the England side never felt as if it was set in stone. If he was this world class player I would have expected that to be the case.
He played in decent teams yet his trophy cabinet is fairly limited especially when compared to somebody like Bergkamp who I think can be described as a world class in his day.
As for Gascoigne, if you read my post you will note I said I was only considering players who spent much of their career at Spurs. Gascoigne I think only had three of four seasons there which would not be much different from the time he spent at Newcastle or Lazio.
It is only my opinion though and I tend to think we look with rose tinted at the past and the quality of player in the premier league these days is much higher than in the past. Now to get a look in at one of the top sides in England you have to fight off competition from players all round the world. In the 80's you just had to be one of the better players from the British Isles.
As I said, very good player in my view, just not one of the very best

A very good player but not in the very top echelon in my view. When I used to see on TV commentators where always eulogising about a cross field pass he hit whilst ignoring the previous 4 attempts he had mucked up. I am not particularly a football fan but I can name a fair few who were the equal or better at Spurs. From the older generation you have Nicholson, Blanchflower, Grieves, Peters, Jennings, Chivers, Jones, Mackay and from roughly the same generation as Hoddle, you have Perryman, Ardiles. That ignores later generations and those who did not spend the majority of their career at Tottenham e.g. Waddle, Clemence etc

Somehow bus companies in the lake district, north Wales the highlands of Scotland seem to manage but then I suppose they always look on with envy at the mountains of the IoM compared to their own. And if you travel to numerous parts of the world with high passes those are brand new expensive buses heavily disguised under battered bodywork.

He has done an OK job and I am probably being generous because it seems that his basic solution to everything is to throw money at it. Look at the millions spent on shiny new buses whilst Blackpool are still happily suing the ones we gave away. It is fairly easy to manage anything if you don't seem to have budget constraints.